Bernard Labadie

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Conductor
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News

  • 05 January 2024

    Bernard Labadie debuts with Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

    Read full article
  • 05 August 2021

    Bernard Labadie returns to the OAE at Glyndebourne

    Read full article

Press

  • Mozart

    The Cleveland Orchestra
    May 2023

    • Labadie was just the right conductor to set the parts of this musical machine in motion, and the Orchestra sounded light, polished, and responsive.

  • Boccherini, Vivaldi & Mozart

    Chicago Symphony Orchestra
    Mar 2023

    • [Labadie] subtly projected alert energy with his understated leadership, injecting needed vigor into Boccherini’s unassuming score.

  • Bach 'St. Matthew Passion'

    Orchestra of St. Luke’s
    Apr 2022

    • Under Labadie’s baton, the music was unwaveringly measured but balanced; its flashes of grandeur didn’t need to be overstated to land powerfully. From the start: The opening calmly built toward what the conductor John Eliot Gardiner has called an aural analogue to an “altarpiece by Veronese or Tintoretto” — immersive, its elements gaining sweep from their interplay.

    • Labadie, the orchestra’s music director and a Bach specialist, managed that complex flow of beauty and rage with a mastery worthy of DeMille. His phrasing had a lithe physicality. Hymns lilted in prayerful dance. Spiritual torment was a sweaty affair. When the mob rose up, you could practically hear the slap of sandals on stone. I don’t mean to suggest that Labadie punched up the melodrama; he doled out more grace than brimstone, and his rhetoric tilted toward understatement. He got the strings to play with effervescent lightness and bound the two orchestras and three choirs into weightless counterpoint.

    • Under Bernard Labadie’s direction, this version leaned into that trace of the body—what Bahktin famously called the “grain” of the voice— not just for the singers but for the orchestra to immensely powerful, raw, and profound results. Labadie wrested every drop of expression from his singers and orchestras, infusing the whole three hours with vitality because he did not shy away from the messy emotional edges of the piece that are only barely contained by Bach’s precise musical language. The performance flew by, the result of Labadie’s energetic pace that made the story feel exciting and dramatic. Under his direction, the choirs were crisp and exacting, with a broad dynamic range. Nothing dragged; and the repeated chorales were beautifully contrasting, with the final, a capella version, “Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden” leaving me misty-eyed.

  • Mozart

    Dallas Symphony
    Mar 2022

    • Labadie, principal conductor of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York, specializes in early music. He had 50-something DSO musicians playing like a top-notch period instrument group, scrubbed mostly free of vibrato and moving along at nimble tempos... Labadie provided animated direction. He leaned into the orchestra when upping the amperage and lovingly shaped phrases with his hands. If the DSO were a sports car at full throttle, then Labadie was the engine at its heart... Under Labadie’s direction, the DSO turned Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony into a dazzling showpiece... The finale crackled with electricity... Labadie expertly balanced the parts throughout.

  • Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo

    Monte Carlo
    Oct 2021

    • Bernard Labadie en souligne efficacement les contours, les progressions, les phrases, les petits motifs. Un tel soin est indispensable pour donner toute son éloquence à cette œuvre sombre, hyper expressive,… Offert en bis, l’Andante K. 315 et ses mélodies infinies resteront le sommet de la soirée, le soliste emmenant tout l’orchestre à l’écoute dans son sillage, sous le regard toujours attentif de Bernard Labadie. Bernard Labadie effectively emphasizes the contours, the progressions, the sentences, the small motifs. Such care is essential to give all its eloquence to this dark, hyper-expressive work… Offered as an encore, the Andante K. 315 and its infinite melodies will remain the high point of the evening, the soloist taking the whole orchestra in his wake, under the ever attentive gaze of Bernard Labadie.

  • Mozart

    Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
    Aug 2021

    • Canadian conductor Bernard Labadie – described ‘as one of the world’s leading conductors of the Baroque and Classical repertoire’ – looks to be a genial presence both on and off the podium and his introductions to what we heard were so fascinating and informative...

  • Telemann: Miriways

    CD
    May 2020

    • La presente execution doit beaucoup a la direction de Bernard Labadie.[...]Sa grande expertise du repertoire du XVIIIeme vaut une maniere toute en nuances dans le soutien des chanteurs comme pour ce qui est des divers morceaux instrumentaux emaillant cette piece. The present performance owes much to Bernard Labadie's direction [...] His great expertise in the 18th century repertoire is reflected in the nuanced way he supports the singers as well as in the various instrumental pieces in the piece.

    • Voila un opera jouissif et plein de vie ou chaque morceau pourrait en etre extrait et faire une excellente oeurve solo... Vivemant conseille! This is a joyful and lively opera where each piece could be extracted and make an excellent solo dream... Highly recommended!

    • ...l’Akademie für alte Musik et son chefse montrent plus investis, plus ardents (les cordes!) et plus théâtraux que leurs prédécesseurs. ...the Akademie für alte Musik and its conductor show themselves to be more committed, more ardent (the strings!) and more theatrical than their predecessors.

    • Vor acht Jahren wurde das Stück szenisch erneut in Magdeburg auf die Bühne gestellt. Davon existiert ein Live-Mitschnitt, der jetzt getoppt wird durch diese Aufnahme der Berliner Akademie für Alte Musik unter Bernard Labbadie. Eight years ago, the play was staged again in Magdeburg. There is a live recording of this, which is now topped by this recording of the Berlin Academy of Early Music under Bernard Labadie.

  • Gluck Orfeo ed Euridice

    English Concert
    Aug 2019

    • But it was the entire picture, created effortlessly by Labadie, that was so impressive here. His moulding of the textures was insightful, the velveteen softness of the cornets and sackbuts never a threat to the soft-spoken strings, the interplay of the echoing violins and centre stage tutti a telling amplification of the dramatic narrative. It moved like the wind, Labadie often treating the cadence of one number as a direct springboard to the next. But never in a way that rocked the music’s composure and stability. Pin-sharp detail counted as much as eloquent paragraphs. The dances danced.

    • Performing with sparkle and sway, the English Concert, under the baton of Canadian conductor Bernard Labadie, along with a stellar trio of soloists, gave a splendid concert performance of Gluck’s Orfeo and Euridice. Opening with a crisp sound, Labadie began with quick, nimble movements, before settling into a smoother style. There was an excellent balance between choir and orchestra, with both producing a rich, honeyed timbre. The chorus, as the furies, were almost shouting at the start of Act Two, while accompanied by rough and ready, striking string chords. Moving on the scene two, tinkling harp playing - used to represent Orfeo’s lyre - was softly accompanied by pizzicato strings, and the oboe playing in Orfeo's "Che puro ciel" was beautifully rounded. There was indeed - as per part of the aria’s translation -‘sweet, enchanting harmony’ displayed in the orchestra, with little bubbles and flourishes underpinned by a steady continuo.

    • Labadie gave the dance of the Frenzies a startling rhythmic energy, and teased out the colours of Gluck’s wonderful score, such as the doleful sound of the two horns, as plangent as a funeral bell. In the wonderful scene in the Elysian fields, the players relished Gluck’s amazing inventiveness, the warblings of flute and solo cellist evoking the scene of pastoral bliss. The chorus of the English Concert made a keenly focused, expressive sound in their laments for Euridice’s death, and jubilation at the happy ending.

    • The big virtue here was the music’s clear beauty, lovingly conveyed under the conductor Bernard Labadie.

  • Mozart Requiem

    Philadelphia Orchestra
    Apr 2019

    • The musical scholarship is all very much welcome. But if you’ve ever sung in a chorus, seen the movie Amadeus, or enjoyed a good fugue, you’ll probably find the Philadelphia Orchestra’s current all-Mozart program enormously satisfying. That’s not to minimize the revelatory nature of Bernard Labadie’s approach. The baroque and classical repertoire specialist led a slimmed-down ensemble Thursday night while sitting on a piano bench (as he does all the time now), and brought a generally early-music character to an ensemble widely admired for its fat, lustrous wall of sound. I very much liked Labadie’s subtle rubato and dynamics. He’s expressive in carefully judged doses, like the way he pushed the strings to victory in the 'Sanctus.'

  • Mozart 'Cosi fan tutte'

    Candian Opera Company
    Feb 2019

    • Leading the COC Orchestra, chorus and singers is Quebec Mozart maestro Bernard Labadie. He brought out every nuance in Mozart’s rich score. The sound was light, rhythmic and evocative.